“Tesla withdrew from the party agreement with the NTSB because it requires that we not release information about Autopilot to the public, a requirement which we believe fundamentally affects public safety negatively,” the company said at the time. “We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable. Even though we won’t be a formal party, we will continue to provide technical assistance to the NTSB.”

Zuckerberg was asked several times about privacy legislation during two days of congressional hearings this week. When asked about specific legislation and plans, Zuckerberg said repeatedly that certain ideas could “make sense,” but that “the details matter a lot.” Facebook has long used its lobbying weight to fight legislation that would expand user privacy at the cost of the company’s business interests.

Google is working on a big redesign for Gmail on the web, it confirmed this week. Leaked screenshots reveal what’s in store for browser users, including a number of new features that are currently only available inside Google’s mobile apps.

More than a few of the congresspeople also didn’t seem to understand that Facebook doesn’t wholesale its user data, but rather uses it to help advertisers target ads on Facebook and on partner sites. These points were easy for Zuckerberg to counter, and in doing so, he ate up time that could have been used on more penetrating questions about Facebook’s data practices.

First, Lyft says that driver work generally breaks down into three sections: turning the app on and waiting for requests, driving to pick up passengers, and driving passengers to their destinations. The ride-hailing company says that since drivers can generally do whatever they want during that first period — driving, working for another app, or nothing at all — it shouldn’t count toward a driver’s hourly earnings. In that respect, just accounting for periods two and three, Lyft drivers’ median earnings are $29.47 an hour nationally and $31.18 an hour in the company’s top 25 markets.

Deadline reports that Yen will star as Tung, a "mentor and teacher" to Mulan. Yen is familiar to Western audiences for his role as Chirrut Îmwe in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but his star shines even brighter in China, where he is best known for his work in the Ip Man franchise.

With personal data use and privacy as the topic du jour , it's easy for Mozilla to earn a few brownie points by turning Tracking Protection on by default. But, will that be enough to stop people from installing Chrome or using Safari on iOS?

Under the new terms, Uber is now required to submit every audit report of its privacy program to the FTC, as opposed to only submitting the initial audit report. The ride-hailing company must also retain certain records from its bug bounty programs regarding vulnerabilities and unauthorized access to consumer data.

Prior to purchasing Ring, Amazon bought Blink, another video doorbell and security camera company. With both firms in hand, Amazon is poised to make even more moves into your home, including with its own products and services, including Amazon Key and the Amazon Cloud Cam.

Facebook is anything but transparent. Its privacy settings are notoriously hard to navigate. The company has bullied and intimidated journalists in an attempt to hide the truth. And the company has straight up lied about how parts of the platform operate, most evidently in the case of the Trending team. So the question is not about whether Facebook has a hidden liberal bias — it's about why the company isn't more transparent with the algorithms that have been proven to have a significant impact on society.

“We would like to thank Karsten Nohl and Jakob Kell for their continued efforts to reinforce the security of the Android ecosystem. We’re working with them to improve their detection mechanisms to account for situations where a device uses an alternate security update instead of the Google suggested security update. Security updates are one of many layers used to protect Android devices and users. Built-in platform protections, such as application sandboxing, and security services, such as Google Play Protect, are just as important. These layers of security—combined with the tremendous diversity of the Android ecosystem—contribute to the researchers’ conclusions that remote exploitation of Android devices remains challenging.”

TechRepublic's Jason Hiner and Dan Patterson discussed what lies ahead for major tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon now that regulators and the public are focused on privacy. https://tek.io/2JGY6k3 pic.twitter.com/9Ur5wr9wa4

Uber will add an emergency 911 feature akin to a panic button — a type of enhanced 911 that connects passengers directly with emergency personnel and enables them to share their location with the operator. The San Francisco company said it also will bolster driver screening by mandating annual reviews of background checks to ensure drivers remain in compliance with its standards. And it plans to enable riders to share their trip information with up to five "trusted contacts" on every trip so there are multiple sets of eyes to ensure rides go smoothly, the company said.

AMD updated its GPU webpage revealing that the Radeon RX 500X series is simply a rebranded lineup of the existing Polaris 500-series graphics cards for computer manufacturers and OEMs. Other than the new suffix, AMD’s ‘new’ GPUs are completely identical to the previous Radeon RX 500 series down to the number of stream processors and compute units, frequency and the underlying architecture.

In the wake of Apple dropping the price of out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacements to $29, demand has become so high that the company is stretching its retail resources to cope —possibly even hiring outside contractors.

The CEO of Backpage.com, a classifieds site likened to an online brothel, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in California on Thursday, while the company itself pleaded guilty to human trafficking in Texas.

It doesn't take much to understand why HomePod sales have been poor: The HomePod is expensive. Apple sells the smart speaker for $350, which is significantly more than Amazon's family of Echo devices ranging from the $50 Echo Dot to the $230 Echo Show . With the exception of $400 Google Home Max, Google's two other smart speaker devices, the $50 Home Mini and $130 Home, also cost significantly less than the Apple HomePod.

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That may sound strange–Trump’s obsession with “winning” is infamous. But the winning is always more about Trump more than it is about the United States–and at times the concepts are mutually exclusive. Trump’s definition of an attack on the U.S. is when his lawyer’s home is raided by the FBI, not when Russia attacks our elections and infrastructure. As president, his main goals have been building a kleptocracy and dodging criminal prosecution, and any war– particularly when it involves Russia–will be enacted with those twin aims in mind. If Trump distracts the public from his own misdeeds, and financially benefits and consolidates power through war, it will not matter to him how many lives are lost–including the lives of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen. His callousness toward U.S. troops places him in stark contrast to any predecessor.

It seems neat enough, but there are downsides, too. One is that you still need your iPhone order to do the tuning, so really you may as well just use a tuner app, and do the tuner-turning part yourself. iPhone tuners are ok, but if you’re using one in a noisy environment, then they’re hopeless. You’re much better off using a headstock tuner that clamps onto the top of the guitar and detects the notes via vibration, instead of using a microphone.

In an email to TechCrunch , a representative from Twitter said the change was simply made for “consistency” to match how the emoji has changed across other platforms. However, it’s hard to not see it as Twitter’s own minor political statement, given the recent shootings at Parkland and YouTube, and how details for these news events tend to start and also unfold on the platform.

This suggests you’ll still be able to open 32-bit apps in future versions of macOS, too; they just may not work as expected. Apple hasn’t specified when support for 32-bit apps will be dropped entirely. “The 64-bit transition for macOS and macOS apps is still underway, so final transition dates have not yet been established,” the document adds.

The five inaugural Audacious Project grantees run the gamut from community-based impact to global problemsolving. The Bail Project, for instance, addresses an issue that affects many Americans personally: the money bail system and how it feeds into mass incarceration. The initiative expands on an existing program, The Bronx Freedom Fund, which pools community resources to post bail for individuals whose families cannot afford the steep fees. The Bail Project will take that model and expand it nationally, city by city, with the help of The Audacious Project.

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The Quantum TV, not surprisingly, gets its name from Quantum Dot technology, the same thing Samsung has been using on its QLED sets. It's capable of delivering a wider color gamut than any of Vizio's other TVs, and that was also noticeable during my demo. Neon imagery and city skylines were lush with color -- they seemed a tad more "alive" than the same footage on the P- and M-series TVs. Vizio is also going for a classier hardware look with the Quantum model, with a near bezel-less design. It's an impressive TV in all respects, but it'll also have to compete with LG's 65-inch OLED sets, which start at $2,600 and deliver superior contrast and black levels. (OLEDs don't have to worry about local dimming zones, since each of their pixels can be turned on and off independently.)